33. AWP } Paul Dry on a park bench.

Suffering from a bout of angst, I found myself a bench a little ways away from the conference hotels and took out Mandelbaum's Iliad. A gentleman, waiting for his lunch companion on the next bench, asked what I was reading and when I told him he and I had a brief conversation about the translations of Greek and Roman classics that we preferred. In about a minute all I knew on the subject was exhausted. The gentlemen, Paul Dry, told me that he is the namesake of a small press that mainly does reprints, and that if I stopped by his table at the book fair he’d give me a copy of the Arthur Golding translation of Ovid’s Metamorphosis. Thus he unwittingly but ably cheered me.

And his Metamorphosis is a fine edition, based on the edition edited by John Frederick Nims. The cover, designed by Adrianne Onderdonk Dudden is striking—an elegant grid transforming patterns. Also included is an essay by Jonathan Bate that discusses the influence of the Golding Metamorphosis on Shakespeare.

Much later that night found me in a café called Luna (for the second time) with poets Kristin Kostick and Andrea Henchey. Matthew Klane, by this time, had called it a night. Andrea was in her own world, possessed by a series of lyric poems she conceived over a gin fizz and had to write down immediately. As text messages. I’m eager to read them/hear them read at the next Inescapable Rhythms.

This left me and Kristin to entertain each other. We talked civilization. What is it, and just how civilized are we? We talked Mumbai: the extreme proximity of its wealth and poverty. Civilization is peace, or freedom from fear, I figure. When we called it a night, I put Kristin and Andrea in a cab and returned to my hotel, where I talked with C.S. Carrier for a while about typewriters. Better than laptops for dictating epistles from the dead. For writing “shapes transformed to bodies straunge.”

32. Weird AWP } the glass mannequin.

Kristin Kostick sent me a text, told me I had to go to the Book 12 reading down near Eastern Market. I read the text, then deleted the text, and flipped the numbers in my head: instead of 1337 St. George I walked to 1373. Since the street entrance to 1373 was dark, I ventured down the cobblestone alley that ran alongside. There was a velvet rope and a sign (an illuminated human heart), so I figured I’d found the place. There was no line. I was late. I asked the bouncer, “Is the reading in here?” He nodded, shone a little light on my ID and waved me in.

Nothing was going on inside. It was an empty bar. No bartender. No bottles of anything on the shelves behind the bar. But: I heard voices and applause. Coming from above. I found the stairs and climbed them. There I found a big open room, a stage with drawn curtains at one end, and dozens of round tables on the floor and lo! a bar with a bartender and booze. The only lights on in the space were strands of green lights, webbed across the ceiling. Many of the tables were occupied and a poet was on the stage. I couldn’t understand what she said. I went to the bar, leaned against it and ordered a drink, scanning the room for Kristin. A number of women in skirts and with thick black hair were seated among the crowd, but I wasn’t sure if any of the women were her. I turned to the bartender to ask about her gin selection—the low light made it impossible for me to read the bottles.

The bartender didn’t reply, didn’t even move. I figured she was listening and I was loathe to interrupt but she was the bartender so I said, a little louder, “Excuse me. What gins do you have?” Again, no response. I moved down the bar a little, as close to the bartender as I could (odd, I thought, that no one else is at the bar) and that was when I realized the bartender was a mannequin.

I admit I recoiled from it, and backed clumsily away from the bar. I looked around, to see if someone was watching me, maybe laughing at me? I looked around and the stillness of everyone in the room—even the poet—became horribly apparent to me. There was no actual person in the room but me.

That there was the sound of speaking and then—it happened while I was in the room—applause—tipped the balance from interesting-weird to freaky-weird and I got downstairs right quick, worrying a little that the bouncer was not only in on the gag but that he was in on the gag and the gag wasn’t funny. Indeed, by the door, stood a man.

As I approached him, I asked dumb questions, trying to keep my cool, “Is that an installation? Where’d you get all the mannequins? Was the whole event the poem?” until I saw that, like the bartender, he was a mannequin. I cursed and brushed past. Doing so, I knocked it over, and it fell and shattered. I didn’t look for someone to apologize to, I just took off. Once I was a good distance from 1373 I texted Kristin who was like, “Where have you been?” and gave me the correct address.

I don’t remember much about the Book 12 reading.

[I should mention that John Cotter and I are reading in the Yes! Reading Series this Sunday. The reading starts at 4pm in the Social Justice Center, 33 Central Avenue. More information about the reading can be found here.]

31. Autographing books, readings, } & where to when.

Immediately following: a few happenings tied to the upcoming Association of Writers & Publishers (AWP) conference in Washington DC next week.

Wednesday, Feb. 2nd. I will read poetry at Busboys & Poets with James Capozzi, Geoffrey Gatza, Matthew Klane, Adam Liszkiewicz, Marjorie Maddox, Brittany Perham, Sarah Sarai, Jon Thompson, Daniel Tiffany, Sam Truitt, and Bryan Walpert; we’re hosted by the journals Free Verse, Reconfigurations, and Word For/Word.

Thursday, Feb. 3rd. I’ll be hosting with Flim Forum Press (and quite a few others) a reading with Jennifer Karmin, Charles Alexander, Amy Allara, Andrea Bates, Joe Elliot, Laura Moriarty, Hoa Nguyen, Sarah Suzor, and James Belflower,. [James Belflower, by the way, will host (with Anna Eyre) me and John Cotter in Albany on the 13th as part of the Yes! Reading Series.]

Friday, Feb. 4th. At the Rose Metal Press table in the AWP book fair, I will be available to autograph copies of Color Plates (or whatever) from 10:30am until it ceases to be reasonable for me to sit at the RMP table with an uncapped pen.

Saturday, Feb. 5th. The AWP book fair is open to the public from 8:30am until 5:30 pm, and there are three tables I would like for you to visit: the aforementioned Rose Metal Press table, the Flim Forum Press table, and the Open Letters Monthly table. The Flim table, by the way, will be a nexus of the new, sure to be graced by poets your children and grandchildren will one day ask about. “Dad, did you ever meet Jessica Smith?” they might ask. And won’t you feel lame if the answer is, “Uh, nope.” Open Letters Monthly will be selling copies of their anthology, which includes an essay of mine about the poet Paul Hannigan.


[photo: Jennifer Karmin reading from Aaaaaaaaaaalice (with Jessica Leigh) at last year's AWP book fair.]

30. Books that aren’t } and books that do.

After Christmas John Cotter asked me if I’d heard of Lance Olsen and I thought THAT name rings a bell but why say so? I said, “I’m not sure,” so John told me all about Olsen’s Calendar of Regrets (SEE John’s review at OLM). What I wish I’d said when John asked if I’d heard of Lance Olsen was, Uh, yeah. I’m in a book with Lance Olsen.

That is, ahem, The Official Catalog of the Library of Potential Literature, edited by Ben Segal and Erinrose Mager.

Ben and Erinrose pitched it so: “The Catalog is to consist of a series of blurbs/short descriptions of books that do not exist. In order to compile that Catalog, we have asked many of the writers, theorists, and text-makers we most admire to imagine that they’ve just read the most amazing book they’ve ever encountered and then write a brief blurb about the imagined text.”

An advanced e-copy was sent to me so I might splendor on its grass before the actual encounter (the Catalog will be at the AWP conference). I’ve been doing. Let me mention a few I especially liked. Matt Bell’s “The Big Book of Infinitely Possible Timetables,” which sounds like the Catalog’s cousin and is similarly interested in the impossible, specifically, the wish to be in all of our possible lives. There are a number of impossible books described—my contribution is such a one; the Catalog lends itself to the improbable. Such as “The Slow Book,” by Shelly Jackson, which imagines a book that is written over the course of centuries (her blurb reminded me of John Cage’s “ORGAN2/ASLSP,” currently being performed as slowly as possible—for 639 years—in the church of St. Burchardi in Halberstadt), or Ben Mirov’s “Inadequate Pillow,” about a book that’s literally all things and nothing. Then there are books more possible. Mallory Rice’s “Hugging in the Kitchen” describes a novel made of the moments after the protagonist cries. I noticed frequent furniture moving in these blurbs. There are a few the-book-as-me blurbs, including Diane Williams’. There’s a lot of language that can’t be read. Lots of incredible cities, too, like the beautiful “Haven” by Evelyn Hampton I’m sure other patterns will becomes apparent to careful readers.

The blurb most unlike all the others: “The Gardens of Krakov” by Brian Reed. I like it most of all the blurbs.

By now you’re suitably interested.

29. A long story written } with teeth.

While swimming Thursday afternoon I met three booksellers, members of the ABA and attendees at the Winter Institute. I tread water while these women from Illinois, all owners of independent bookstores, asked me about Color Plates. Thus began (for me) two days in the mighty Crystal City of being introduced to booksellers. A few hours later I joined Meg Taylor (from SPD) and Abby Beckel in a ballroom occupied by authors signing their new books for booksellers. We did our best to politely ingratiate ourselves with the crowd. The crowd was kind to us. We took a few books. I did meet Tim Wynne-Jones and he was eager—eager!—to speak with me about Nightfall and the Bay of Fundy. Afterward, a quiet Chinese dinner with Meg and Abby.

Written on a plaque in the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History: “…using its front teeth and claws, this palcocaster dug its burrow in soft sediment. After its death, sediment filled the hole and preserved the beaver’s skeleton.” Behind the glass a corkscrew of stone—a petrified tunnel—that culminated in a burrow full of its maker’s fossilized bones. I found this affecting. I spent half of Friday in the museum, and most of that time among the bones of prehistoric mammals. I was similarly affected by a phrase that finished the Museum’s narrative on the evolution of horses: “…merely the current stage in a long and complex evolutionary history.”

All this and reading Andrew George’s translation of The Epic of Gilgamesh—now my favorite of the translations I’ve read—put me in a peculiar frame of mind for my second night of the ABA’s Winter Institute, where I was scheduled to autograph copies of Color Plates for booksellers. I had no idea what to expect and was surprised when people eagerly came up to me, already excited about CP, and in some instances urging me to come read at their store. We ran out of copies before we ran out of interest. Much of this excitement was due to a presentation Meg gave Friday morning—while I was sitting in the shadow of an Irish Elk, wondering (as I often do) about its antlers.

Ralph Nader sat next to us and signed copies of his book. He and I did briefly touch on the subject of our (essentially) two-party system, but he was preoccupied by a sour stomach. Bad cream, he thought. Ginger ale and cheese, he thought, would settle things nicely. I’m wasn’t so sure. Ginger ale, yeah, but cheese? He also praised a set of legal books, designed to help non-lawyers navigate the law. You know, write your own will. The three of us were invited by the publisher to join Mr. Nader for dinner, but he and his publisher left a couple hours before we could, so—a missed opportunity. Mr. Nader seemed exactly as he seems on television, etc.

Saturday, today, I went back to the Natural History Museum. I considered my many other options, but realized I wanted to be there, and in those thoughts. I was particularly interested in the “mammal-like” reptiles. Dimetrodon! My brother! I dwelled a long while beneath the prehistoric whales—the subject of one of my better elementary school papers. (I fondly recall an afternoon spent in the Boston Aquarium library, photocopying papers on the subject.) I confirmed that I like crinoids. I will write a slim volume about crinoids.

Perhaps in a few years I’ll be autographing copies of my crinoids monograph for booksellers attending the Winter Institute. Perhaps in a few million years someone will put my bones in a museum.

28. SPD will feature } me.

Thursday will find me on the train to DC again, but not for a reading—Small Press Distribution (SPD) has asked me to represent them as their “featured author” at the American Booksellers Association Winter Institute. I’m still trying to get my head around what that is, but I gather copies of Color Plates will be put into the hands of hundreds of Independent bookstore owners, and I’ll get the chance to meet them all.

Friday appears to be small press day at the Winter Institute. I’ll be autographing Color Plates in a room with just three other authors: Sharyn Wolf, Alexander Maksik, and Ralph Nader.

Also in attendance at the Winter Institute will be Tim Wynne-Jones, who—if it’s the same Tim Wynne-Jones—wrote several radio scripts in the ‘70s and ‘80s for Nightfall and Vanishing Point, including one of the most mysterious and beautiful episodes of Nightfall, “The Road Ends at the Sea,” set in a lighthouse on the black rocks of the Bay of Fundy.

27. In the pages of } Paul Hannigan.

Spent the last three days in Brunswick, GA. with the papers of the poet Paul Hannigan. The second such trip. I had the feeling that I was seeing the future.

On the way home, at a restaurant in the Newark airport, I wrote a letter to a friend and felt as I was writing that the tone wasn’t mine at all but Hannigan’s.